Topics in High Energy Theory: Introduction to Worldsheet String Theory

Catalog description

Advanced topics in high energy theory. Specific topic changes by year/instructor. This year the course will be an introduction to perturbative string theory via worldsheet conformal field theories (CFTs), covering the bosonic string as well as the type II and heterotic superstrings. After learning about the various component CFTs that live on the worldsheet, we will study the following physics topics: construction of the physical free-string spectrum via the BRST method, computation of some tree-level and one-loop amplitudes, and D-branes. Prerequisites: (1) Basics of complex analysis and contour integrals, (2) An understanding of the structure of quantum field theory in the path integral formalism, and (3) Differential geometry, at the level that one might encounter in a general relativity course.